Hello everyone and welcome back! I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas time with your loved ones.
Well, its time to get back to grinding mode and lets delve right into Best 5 Reads!
1) Online tool provides support for people with suicidal thoughts
As an individual with lived experience of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, I was so happy to see “Staying Safe from Suicidal Thoughts” (StayingSafe.net) launched by 4 Mental Health last month. What makes this online resource different from other websites offering support to those in distress is the manner in which it offers genuine compassion, kindness, and simple practical ways to help keep people safer from thoughts of harm and suicide.
As I am aware from my own personal experience, people with suicidal thoughts don’t usually want to terminate their life, they may just want an end to their emotional or physical pain. The impulse to end one’s life may be short lived, or seem to be the only way to deal with mental suffering. Hence the importance of positive means of support and tools or interventions, such as StayingSafe.net, which might act as the tipping point back to safety. The website itself encourages people in distress to seek support from others, affirming that they deserve this, and shouldn’t have to deal with what they are going through alone. There are emotionally powerful and informed videos from people with personal experience of depression and suicidal ideation, and compassionate clinicians offer advice on how to get through difficult feelings and recover.
2) An Evolutionary Perspective on Paranoia
Although paranoia is the most commonly presenting symptom of psychosis, paranoid thoughts occur frequently in the general population and range widely in severity, from mild socio-evaluative concerns to frank delusions about the harmful intentions of others. Furthermore, paranoia commonly appears after a surprisingly diverse range of difficulties including trauma, brain injury, sleep deprivation, drug use, and psychiatric and neurological disorder. Evolutionary accounts of paranoia have been proposed before but have largely focused on paranoia as a misplaced threat response. Although social threat is clearly a key component, the experience of paranoia is markedly more complex than these accounts would lead us to believe: paranoia can involve multiple alterations in the perception of the social environment, the identification of specific but seemingly arbitrary groups as the source of persecution, and extended beliefs about conspiracy and complex coordination between the perceived persecutors. Here, we argue for an evolutionary approach to paranoia that more fully accounts for its complex social phenomenology and considers how it can be understood in light of our evolved social cognition. More specifically, in terms of the ability to form coalitions and coordinate between groups in situations of cooperation and competition.
3) Insomnia, Other Sleep Problems Rising in College Students
Changes in sleep patterns are common among college students. A study in Norway found increases in insomnia and other sleep problems, especially in female students.
4) Painting Ketamine in a Bad Light
Studies of the use of ketamine for depression revealed that the agent induces a rapid reduction in depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation in most patients.
5) Telemedicine Shows Promise to Improve Geriatric Psychiatric Care
Telepsychiatry services for elderly patients may increase access to geriatric specialists, reduce travel time for both providers and patients, and reduce healthcare costs.
Thank you and see you tomorrow for more articles.
Best Regards,
Vikram
PsiHub 
Thank you for the good resources. They may help save someone’s life. It is incredible that a lot of people are talking about suicide and those related thoughts online today that I have ever noticed.
I read someone’s blog, and he was talking about suicide in a way that sounded very real and very much as though he intended to carry it out. I hope you might address how to report, etc. someone who is talking about it on the internet, particularly in a blog, where you don’t know really who to contact. I did my best to post to him about life being sacred, and everything I could think of to try to stop him from doing anything to hurt himself. I talked about my own feelings like that in the past, and things I did to get myself out of it, or how I prevented myself from doing it. I honestly did not know quite what to do, but I just kept trying to talk about all the reasons not to do it. I honestly don’t know what was going on with him, and he wouldn’t give me anything but his first name eventually and the work he did, but I did not know what country, or where he worked, etc. I checked his blog and there have been no other posts. I had gotten several other positive women I know well who are very spiritual and kind to post to him too, and they did.
So I hope you can address what we should do when we run into someone like this. Would the host of the blog (in this case, wordpress.com) be able to locate him from the name of his site, and could they then get someone to do some kind of wellness check? What if it is in another country, which I slightly suspected? Anyway, thank you so much for doing this.
After Thanksgiving, I had been trying to get the title to my mobile home, which is paid for but I have still not gotten the title. Anyway, I tried to talk to an attorney through legal aid about it, and I was becoming increasingly overwhelmed and scared, for the owners of the park where my mobile home is located are so truly nasty and both are attorneys, and millionaires, I don’t know how to deal with them to make sure I get the title while I am still alive. I tried calling them and the way the woman answered the phone was so vulgar and scary for someone who did not know who was on the other end of the line. So the more time went on and I tried to talk to her to let her know what I wanted, the more distressed I became, and I began to think in terms of ending it all. But I think in reality, I was in total overwhelm, and just did not know how to handle it safely. The money I used to purchase the home is the last savings of any kind that I have and I want to leave the home to my significant other, who is also a senior and has a lot of medical issues too. But I cannot do any of these things as it is right now.
So yes, we do need plenty of good and responsive resources. I look forward to having more resources and information on the situation I gave you about online threats.
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Thank you Anne for sharing your recent encounter with a person who was feeling suicidal. And thank you for not only messaging him but also involving other kind hearted ladies to message that person as well.
To be honest, I dont think anyone knows how to “effectively” deal with an online anonymous person who is feeling suicidal. We have to keep in mind that barring exceptions, most of the suicidal ideations last for a couple of minutes and thats when you have to distract these people with proper intervention. One of the best resources (which I shared recently) is called http://stayingsafe.net and its getting really positive reviews from people who had previous episodes of suicide and/or ideations. Another resource which you can use is 7Cups. Its basically an anonymous chatting tool where a person talks to trained online “listeners”. These listeners will listen to what you are going through, help you reflect on them and if necessary, will guide you to the important resources.
Another resource which can be used when a person is feeling suicidal is to reach out to trained counsellors by calling dedicated hotline numbers.
You can check out this link for hotlines in different countries: http://www.buddy-project.org/hotlines.
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The main goal is to distract people who are feeling suicidal and then guide them to proper care.
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I hope your situation is solved too Anne. If you need anything, we are here for you 🙂
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